[zeek]

personally, I think that when a dolby source is played back without dolby, it sounds very brittle. The dolby encoded does sound a bit dull to me but when weighed with the brittle sound and the hiss factor, I think it's less destructive to playback witht dolby on and edit to fix the problem, provided the deck is properly calibrated. I could bore you with the history of dolby, why it was used so predominetly back when, and how it works, but more than likely boredom would sink in and you would lose interest quicker than, well, you probably just lost interest by reading this far

just as an fyi, here is a great deal on a tascam hd-p2. I don't know the seller, I just found it on a craigslist search. If your serious about transferring, this is a good option. they sell new for 800 +

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ele/962868696.html

edit,

thank you audioarchivist for all your efforts in taping/transferring/sharing for 20+ years. Thats huge man. Many thanks.